Internal dating: A date! A date! An unambiguous date! Near the end of their adventure, Mulder loses consiousness at 4.30 am, March 12th 1995. This is after at least three days on the ship, and Scully doesn't wake up until 36 hours after their rescue, with a lot of healing still to go for the both of them.
In the Norwegian Sea, soldiers abandon a US Navy destroyer, the USS Ardent. The captain, Captain Barclay, pulls a gun on them but the Lieutenant says they don't want to end up like the others. Later, a Norwegian fishing coat find the survivors in a life-boat, old and wrinkled.
Mulder calls Scully to the Bethesda Naval Hospital, telling her what has happened. The ship, USS Ardent, was missing for 42 hours before the lifeboat was found. Only one man is still alive, and he's been able to get her clearance to look at him, due to her medical background.
Scully sees the survivor, Lt Harper, who looks about 90 although he's supposed to be 28. She's confused, but a doctor comes in and she is thrown out as her clearance code is invalid.
Scully returns to Mulder's office, saying how something very strange is happening. Mulder tells her how 9 ships have disappeared in the same area since 1949. He tells her about the Philadelphia Project. She says it was a World War II project to render ships invisible to radar, but then the Manhattan project hotted up and the scientists were transferred there. Mulder says no, they went to Roswell instead, and he thinks the experiment continued, using alien technology. 9 months after Roswell the first ships started disappearing. He speculates it was an experiment with wormholes.
Mulder has booked a flight to Norway. He plans to give himself a 24 hour headstart before telling Skinner. "I want this one myself," he says. Scully says she'll come too, as she's intrigued about what happened to Harper.
In Norway, no-one will sail them out to the place where the deserted detroyer is. Scully says she's never seen a sailor fear the sea before but they all look scared. Henry Trondheim introduces himself and offers to take them. Everyone else is scared of legends of a stone coming out of the sky and crashing there.
They travel out in Trondheim's boat, and Mulder is seasick. The radar goes weird and suddenly they crash into the destroyer, It's really rusted and looks years old, though it's dated 1991.As the camera lingers, it rusts a little more.
Inside are lots of bodies, all covered with white crystal stuff. When they're touched they crumble away.
Trondheim's ship is sailed away by someone, leaving them stranded. They can't get the radio or anything to work. Trondheim's hostile, saying his ship was his life and demanding that they're honest. Mulder says it's something to do with secret military experiments with time. "Time's maybe speeding up," he says. Trondheim says this is as crazy as the myths of evil meteorites. Trondheim appeals to Scully, saying she doesn't buy any of this, does she? Scully doesn't get a chance to answer, for there is a scream.
They find Trondheim's mate, Halverson, dead from a head injury, and then find the ship's captain, Barclay, looking old and clutching a bottle of alcohol.
Barclay's log says some of his crew saw a glowing light in the sea.He says that everything stopped after that. Trondheim denounces him as drunkard, but Barclay says he's telling the truth. "Time got lost," he says. "You can't do anything."
Mulder and Scully agree Barclay's too weak to kill Halverson, meaning someone else is on board. Trondhiem gives Halverson a sea burial, then is attacked by this other man, but Mulder arrives in time. The attacker is Olafsson, and he's still young looking. Trondheim says Olafsson's a notorious illegal whaler. Scully says the ship's log talks about some Norwegian sailors picked up, and they deduce this was Olafsson and his friends. The others are presumably the ones who took his ship.
Barclay dies, and is turning into a pillar of salt, covered with the white crystals.
Everyone goes to sleep. Mulder takes first watch. When he awakens Scully to take over they both notice that the other one is showing signs of ageing. Scully still thinks there's no evidence of it really being rapid ageing as their hair isn't going grey. She thinks it's to do with free radicals - reactive chemicals which cause ageing. If there is a meteorite it could be metallic, and it and the ship could be acting as the two terminals in some sort of giant battery, exciting the free radicals and oxidising everything.
Red liquid starts dripping from the ship, looking like blood. It's rust. Mulder notices that all the pipes are rusty except one, which they track through the ship and find out it's the water in the sewage system. They realise they're both wrong with their theories. That the problem is in the water, and this is the only safe water on the ship. Barclay was kept alive by drinking lots of alcohol, and they can be kept alive by drinking from the toilet.
While they're gone, Olafsson tries to convince Trondheim that they've deserted him to die, and urges him to let him go. He knows the secret of staying alive, he says, and will share it in return for freedom.
Mulder and Trondheim fight over the fact that Olafsson's not here any more (Trondheim blames Mulder's knots) but Scully interrupts to ask them for blood and urine samples. "So what happens now?" asks Trondheim. There is no answer.
Eighteen hours later, Scully reports how the ageing has slowed in herself and Trondheim, but Mulder's still in a bad way, As he was seasick, he drank lots of water when thy arrived. They have massive concentration of salt in their bodies. Trondheim urges her to give up on Mulder and let him die to save the rest of them. "He isn't going to make it," he says. Scully is determined not to give up.
Trondheim goes to lock himself in with the untainted water and, as Scully watches in horror, it all drains out of the toilets. Scully threatens him with a gun but he challenges her to shoot, and she doesn't.
In a panic, Scully rushes through the ship and searches for liquid. She finds a snow globe, a tin of sardines and 6 lemons, which she mixes up and offers to Mulder. Mulder thinks she should have it as she has more chance of surviving while he has no real chance anyway. Scully says that the reason he should have it. As they're both being noble, the ship judders and the glass smashes.
The juddering was from the outer hull corroding through, Trondheim, locked in with the sewage water, is drowned.
14 hours later, Mulder tries to joke. "The service on this ship is terrible, Scully," he says, then grows serious. "It's not fair. It's not our time. There's still work to do." Scully tells him about her near-death experience (in One Breath). "There's one thing I'm certain of, as certain as I am of this life, we have nothing to fear when it's over." "I'm so tired," Mulder complains, and she urges him to sleep.
Scully writes in the log how Mulder lost consciousness in the morning, and there's nothing more she can do for him, or for herself. She's been reading a book of Norse legends about how the world will end in a blanket of snow, after which a wolf will eat the sun, "I think I hear the wolf at the door," she writes, then lets the pen fall.
Later, a rescue party comes in and finds the two of them unconscious.
Scully awakens in the hospital, where she is told she and Mulder will be okay. Mulder would have died if it wasn't for the observations she'd made in the ship's log. Scully wants them to go back to the ship and find out what caused this whole thing, but is told it sank just after they were rescued.
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